


A Place to Lay Your Head

by ElaneTheTired



Category: Kingkiller Chronicles - Patrick Rothfuss
Genre: Abenthy moved to Tarabean, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ben's wife, Fix-It, Fluff and Angst, Guess who he found there?, He isn't dead set on revenge, Her kid is dead though, Kvothe deserves good things, Kvothe has a supportive family, Only built way eralier, She is a good Mom, So maybe he won't fuck up so badly, The waystone inn, ahem cannon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-18
Updated: 2020-09-18
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:20:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26527375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElaneTheTired/pseuds/ElaneTheTired
Summary: After their son's death, Abenthy and his wife decide to leave Halowfell and move to Tarbean, where they open a small, quaint inn.  One fateful day while shopping, Abenthy  carelessly wanders into the depths of waterside, where, in an unlikely turn of events he finds his old student. Now with his new family at his back, dark secrets locked away in his mind, and fierce determination and thirst for knowledge in his heart, watch Kvothe's ascent to greatness.
Relationships: Abenthy | Ben (Kingkiller Chronicles) & Kvothe
Comments: 4
Kudos: 37





	1. Prologue

Ben didn’t much like Tarbean. The first cause for that emotion was the fact that it was a city. Not a village, where everybody knew everybody and there were no secretes, not a small town, where the townsfolk lived in a quite large but bustling and well natured community. No, Tarbean was a large city, in which one could never explore all the streets and corners, never meet all the people, and never know all one’s neighbors, because they were as likely to move somewhere else and disappear from one’s life as they were to stay.

Those things had been known to Ben before he had ever seen Tarbean, and with that he could somehow cope. His real dislike though, came from the special and quite unpleasant nature of Tarbean itself. 

Tarbean had always reminded him of two large war encampments lead by two rivaling lords. The one, gaunt, sharp and cruel, pushed his subordinates as hard as he could, driving some of them to madness, and others, those who were too weak or unlucky to stand the pressure, even beyond the verge of death. The other, rich-clothed, red faced and flush to obesity, gave his people all they could dream of. He did not set any limits, and so slowly but surely turned those in his camp into copies of himself.

What irked Ben the most, was that the two camps ignored each other. They were meant to live side by side and fight for the same purpose, and if they ever deigned to help each other, both sides would be happier in the end. But they preferred to ignore the mass of possibilities that led to a brighter future, instead hissing and biting at each other like two angered snakes, the one too frightened and distrustful, the other too blinded by its own power.

That was probably why, when they had decided to settle in Tarbean, they bought a place on the border between waterside and hillside, where the poor and the rich somehow intermingled, where there was relative, if a little tense piece.


	2. Unlikely Encounters

They had arrived just in time, Ben noted again with relief as he walked toward one of Tarbean’s many marketplaces. It was very cold, and the light snow that has been falling nonstop since yesterday morning has covered Tarbean’s roofs in a clean white sheet, and it’s streets in lumps of dirty, half melted and again frozen snow that was even worse than the dirt and soot that reigned there in the other times of year.

All in all, winter was coming to its full power, and Ben was happy they were not stuck on the roads in such horrid weather, freezing in his old wagon. 

During the week that had passed since they arrived Ben had been to various shops and marketplaces, and now he was going to his favorite one, which wasn’t closest, but was cheapest, and not too lousy. There was so much to be bought, so much to be arranged, that his head sometimes felt like a new pillow stuffed to bursting. He had been surprised to realize it hadn’t happened to him since his days in the university. The job of an innkeeper, it had turned out, was much more complicated than it seemed at first glance.

Occupied by his thoughts, Ben didn’t notice when he stepped off of his intended route, and only realized what happened when he found himself standing in a small, dirty alley, buried in snow to his ankles.

Ben cursed quietly (it was a pity alpha and beta weren’t there to appreciate it) and looked around. The only light in the alley came from the half opened back door of a shoddy-looking tavern a dozen feet from Ben. He decided to enter and ask for directions, hoping frantically that he would not be robbed or killed for his money. Waterside being what it was, such an outcome wasn’t all that unlikely. He reached the door, took a deep breath, intending to knock (in this case, some politeness couldn’t do much damage) but then suddenly stopped, his hand still hanging in midair. 

The back door of the tavern, like most doors this time of year, was flanked by two large heaps of snow, some of which had melted in the relative heat coming from inside. From where he stood now in the patch of light just outside the door, he could see that what he had taken to be a piece of red cloth, half buried in one of the heaps, was actually a lock of red hair. As he looked closer, he also noticed that the heap had a weird shape to it, not like snow that was cleared to open a passage to the door, but as if there was something buried there.

Pain and horror squeezed Ben’s chest tight as he realized what he was seeing. A beggar, dying or, most likely, already frozen to death. He had probably crawled here, seeking the warmth of the tavern, but fell asleep, and was now covered by even more snow. But that was not even the worst of it – that pile was not large enough to contain the body of an adult, even a very thin one. No, beneath the snow lay a child, condemned to a cruel death by the indifference of others (Ben was sure he was not the first one to notice).

Anger and cold determination forced him to his knees near the half melted pile, but it was something else that made his hands tremble as he began frantically brushing away the snow. It was an unexplained emptiness that had settled in the pit of his stomach, fuzzy thoughts and half-formed suspicions that hid in the back of his mind and set his teeth on edge. This uneasiness grew into outright panic, forcing him to move even faster, for Ben has learned long ago to trust his instincts, and right now they were all screaming.

He didn’t feel pain in his muscles, nor cold in his bare fingers. He didn’t hear the snide comments of a few people who had gathered to watch. All that mattered to him right then was the body of a red haired child that slowly, terribly, unforgivably slowly emerged from the dirty flecks of frozen water.

Still breathing, Ben noted with some relief as he finally dug the boy’s body out (he thought it was a boy, though it was hard to tell), and wrapped him in his woolen cloak. The small, emaciated body lay almost weightless in his hands, and the uneven, shallow breaths were almost unnoticeable, but still there. He was indeed very young, probably no older than thirteen, and wore only an old sack that was frozen solid in places, and a few rags wrapped around his limbs to act as shoes and gloves. Ben was about to get up and carry this child home, but something in the thin, dirty face made him hesitate. 

It was very hard to notice, for hunger, cold, and fear did not treat the young face kindly, but when Ben did recognize the vaguely familiar features the cacophony of uneasy thoughts came to a deafening crescendo, and his heart sank down through his boots and into the dark, unknowable depth of the earth. 

“Kvothe?” his voice was hoarse and unfamiliar, sharp and brittle like a shard of broken glass, yet it proved to be enough. The child’s eyelids cracked open, a pair of dizzy eyes trying to focus on what was in front of them. At first Ben thought they were pale gray, but as they finally managed to concentrate, the color changed imperceptibly, turning into a very light shade of green.

It took a few seconds for recognition to dawn in Kvothe’s eyes, and when it did he tried to speak, but Ben hushed him. There was no need in words now, but the child did need every scrap of strength left in him to survive.

“It’s fine Red, you are safe now.” He didn’t trust his voice to do more than that, so he just got up, cradling the small body protectively against his chest, and headed out of the alley, still ignoring the curious onlookers.

**~**

He didn’t remember how he got back to the building that was now his home, and was soon to be his inn. He also hadn’t noticed when Kvothe had lost his consciousness again, but at least the boy had warmed up enough to begin shivering violently. It made running much harder, but it was a sing that Kvothe had a chance, which was more than Ben had dared to expect.

Lina, Ben’s wife, was startled from her cleaning when he burst through the front door.

“Ben, what-” she stopped as she saw the gaunt face sticking from the trembling bundle of wool in his hands, confusion momentarily replaced by concern.

“Tehlu Ben, who is this, what happened?” she hurried toward him as he advanced deeper into the to-be common room. 

“No time to explain, Lin. Warm up some water for a bath please, if we don’t warm him up quickly he will die.” 

Lina did not object, and ran to do as he had said. She had learned that when it came to medicine, her husband knew what he was doing, even though he was not all-powerful (she quashed the tears that rose in her eyes at that thought). Ben too rose to the second floor, and entered the guest room closest to his own. Heat drained from his hand as he murmured a binding to light a fire in the hearth.

He unwrapped his cloak from around the shivering boy, then stripped away the sack and the rags to assess the damage. A hot knife seemed to turn slowly in his heart as he saw what his healthy, slightly plump student had turned into, but ben forced himself to ignore his feelings. It was not the place nor the time. He would grieve if he had to, but later.

Miraculously, none of Kvothe’s fingers seemed to be in danger, and neither did any part of his face. There were no serious wounds, only a few shallow scratches, bruises, and many scars, none of which ben remembered. There were no visible signs of any other illnesses, either. So, ben concluded with some relief, it was hunger, hypothermia and whatever had happened that brought him to lie unconscious in that heap of snow in the first place.

A few minutes later Lina called that the bath was ready. Ben carried Kvothe down the corridor into their washroom, and gently lowered him into the steaming tub. They washed him together, scrubbing what seemed like, and might have been, years of dirt from the milk-white skin that was pulled tightly around his bones. It was only after they had dried and fed him (ben had managed to awake Kvothe again, though this time he did not rise to full consciousness) that they got to talk.

  
  


“Who is this boy, Ben?” asked Lina, sipping hot tea from a wooden cup. They were in their room, sitting in two armchairs opposite each other. Her tone was gentle and curious, not at all reproachful. She knew and loved her husband, and his warm, if a little soft heart had never bothered her. Abenthy smiled his thanks at her, sipping from his own tea.

“His name is Kvothe. You probably don't remember, he was with the troop that brought me to Halowfell.”

“But, what is he doing here then?” she asked, even more confused than before, “and how did you find him?”

“I don’t know how he got here. I can't imagine what had to happen for his parents to let him get to such a state. I don’t even understand how he could have gotten this far east, they never go this far from baron Greyfallow’s lands. As to how I found him…” and Ben shortly recounted his ‘trip to the market’.

“Oh, poor thing!” Lina has put a hand to her mouth, and tears were glistening in the corners of her eyes. After a moment she asked in a low whisper, as if that would soften the blow: “Do you think he will live?”

“I don't know.” Answered Ben quietly, staring unseeingly into the dark liquid in his cup. “Such a level of hypothermia by itself could kill a grown, healthy man. Coupled with the horrible state in which he was to begin with, and the small amount of resources his body has to draw upon for healing, the chances are tiny.” 

Ben again pushed down the emotions that threatened to flood his mind. It was becoming harder, now that he didn't have anything specific he could do, so he sank just a little into heart of stone. Not enough to banish his emotions completely, but enough to ease their pressure on him and strengthen his belief. Lina saw his jaw tighten, the lines of his face become harder, more pronounced. His eyes became harder as well, and acquired a steely glint.

“But I still hope.” He said, now with a special kind of certainty, the one that comes from a deep love for someone. “This kid is stronger than any man I have ever met, and ten times as stubborn. If anyone could survive this, it’s him.” Ben drank the rest of his tee and got up. “I will watch him tonight. There isn't much I can do, but still…” he trailed off, pain and doubts creeping back past his barriers, but Lina nodded encouragingly at him, and Abenthy was again immensely thankful to have her by his side. 

“I will take over at midnight, love. You need to rest, too.” With that she kissed him good night, and climbed into bed.


End file.
